Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What is a thesaurus?
- 3 Tools for subject access and retrieval
- 4 What a thesaurus is used for
- 5 Why use a thesaurus?
- 6 Types of thesaurus
- 7 The format of a thesaurus
- 8 Building a thesaurus 1: vocabulary collection
- 9 Vocabulary control 1: selection of terms
- 10 Vocabulary control 2: form of entry
- 11 Building a thesaurus 2: term extraction from document titles
- 12 Building a thesaurus 3: vocabulary analysis
- 13 The thesaural relationships
- 14 Building a thesaurus 4: introducing internal structure
- 15 Building a thesaurus 5: imposing hierarchy
- 16 Building a thesaurus 6: compound subjects and citation order
- 17 Building a thesaurus 7: conversion of the taxonomy to alphabetical format
- 18 Building a thesaurus 8: creating the thesaurus records
- 19 Managing and maintaining the thesaurus: thesaurus software
- 20 Conclusion
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Appendix 1 Sample titles for thesaurus vocabulary
- Appendix 2 Sample terms for the thesaurus
- Appendix 3 Facets at stage 1 of analysis
- Appendix 4 Facets at stage 2 of analysis
- Appendix 5 Completed systematic display
- Appendix 6 Thesaurus entries for sample page
- Index
2 - What is a thesaurus?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Content
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 What is a thesaurus?
- 3 Tools for subject access and retrieval
- 4 What a thesaurus is used for
- 5 Why use a thesaurus?
- 6 Types of thesaurus
- 7 The format of a thesaurus
- 8 Building a thesaurus 1: vocabulary collection
- 9 Vocabulary control 1: selection of terms
- 10 Vocabulary control 2: form of entry
- 11 Building a thesaurus 2: term extraction from document titles
- 12 Building a thesaurus 3: vocabulary analysis
- 13 The thesaural relationships
- 14 Building a thesaurus 4: introducing internal structure
- 15 Building a thesaurus 5: imposing hierarchy
- 16 Building a thesaurus 6: compound subjects and citation order
- 17 Building a thesaurus 7: conversion of the taxonomy to alphabetical format
- 18 Building a thesaurus 8: creating the thesaurus records
- 19 Managing and maintaining the thesaurus: thesaurus software
- 20 Conclusion
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Appendix 1 Sample titles for thesaurus vocabulary
- Appendix 2 Sample terms for the thesaurus
- Appendix 3 Facets at stage 1 of analysis
- Appendix 4 Facets at stage 2 of analysis
- Appendix 5 Completed systematic display
- Appendix 6 Thesaurus entries for sample page
- Index
Summary
[Captain] Hook and Peter [Pan] are now, as it were, alone on the island. Below, Peter is on the bed, asleep, no weapon near him; above, Hook, armed to the teeth, is searching noiselessly for some tree down which the nastiness of him can descend.Down this the pirate wriggles a passage. In the aperture below his face emerges and goes green as he glares at the sleeping child. Does no feeling of compassion disturb his sombre breast? The man is not wholly evil: he has a Thesaurus in his cabin, and is no mean performer on the flute.
J. M. Barrie,Peter Pan,Act IV Reproduced with kind permission of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children,LondonThe nature of a thesaurus
The ‘reference book’ thesaurus
The thesaurus as a reference tool dates back to 1852, and the publication of Roget's Thesaurus ; this, or some modern equivalent, is probably what the majority of people have in mind when they think of a thesaurus. Captain Hook's thesaurus in the quotation at the top of the chapter is almost certainly a reference to Roget. But Roget's Thesaurus has a fundamentally different purpose from the sort of thesaurus which will be discussed in this book.
Most information professionals would consider Roget to be a type of classification scheme because it organizes its vocabulary in a systematic manner. In other words, it is a list of concepts or ideas, which are arranged so that similar concepts are next to each other. The example in Figure 2.1 (overleaf), taken from a digital version of Roget,1 shows part of the list of conceptual classes; these are from the section on language. Underneath is the complete and detailed entry for one of these classes; as you can see, this consists of a list of synonyms or near-synonyms for the headword gathered together and arranged by parts of speech.
A thesaurus of this type is a guide to the English language organized conceptually, and incidentally it makes a map of knowledge.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Essential Thesaurus Construction , pp. 3 - 12Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2006